Web Analytics for Communicators
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The document discusses web analytics for communicators, emphasizing the importance of understanding the purpose behind communication, website performance, and audience engagement. It outlines various metrics and tools for measuring effectiveness, including Google Analytics, and highlights the need for client-focused content and actionable insights. Additionally, it provides strategies for content promotion, monitoring user behavior, and refining messages based on data-driven insights.
Web Analytics for Communicators
- 2. Why do we communicate? • Why do you have a website? • What’s your message? • What will you measure? • Is it SMART? Specific, Measurable, Achievable (or actionable), Relevant, Time-bound (timely) • Will you be able to act upon your findings?
- 3. Before you measure: Is content student/client-focused? Self-focused • Inform, persuade • Increase registrations, purchases, subscriptions • Increase brand awareness • Increase status, build a following, start a movement • Customer retention • Change behavior • Generate qualified leads Client-focused • Answer my question quickly and definitively • Get me past a pain point • Simplify my decision-making, my life • Increase my status • Affirm my beliefs, ideas, decisions • Be entertained • Collaborate, share, socialize
- 4. Data sources in addition to Google Analytics • Email analytics • Customer relationship management (CRM) data • Customer surveys • Informal conversations • Call Center data (front desk, receptionist, or adviser) • Industry data (Lipman Hearne, Stamats, Councils of Graduate Schools) • Data from across business/university silos • Tracking codes
- 5. Identify Topics Create Content Optimize Publish (everywhere) Promote MEASURE Refine MEASURE
- 6. Set up for useable signals
- 7. Don’t measure your own use Admin > View > Filters
- 8. Exclude many bots Admin > View > Reporting View Settings
- 9. Add goals Admin > View > Goals
- 12. Create new goal
- 13. Connect to Google Webmaster
- 14. General health measures (trend lines) • Number of unique visitors (Is the site still performing?) • Time on site (Are people hanging around?) • Avg. number of pages views (Do they look around?) • Frequency and recency (Do they maintain interest?) • Bounce rate (Do they run away?) • Page load times (Do they have to wait?)
- 15. Intelligence Events and Alerts
- 18. How to read this stuff
- 19. Check the little question mark
- 20. Click on the graduation cap (top right)
- 21. What do communicators care about? • Are people reading my stuff? • How do they find it? • Do they take the time to read it? • Do they engage with my site? • What pages are getting shared? • Did my new headline make a difference? • Did my new meta description make a difference? • What else should I write about?
- 22. What can we learn from analytics? New or legacy web page(s) • Is it seen? Views, page ranking in search • Is it accepted? Time on site/page • Is it relevant? Times shared, inbound links, trackbacks • What’s the best way to amplify this type of message? Review of where it’s shared, or clicked on. Which sources return best conversion? • You’re not just reporting. You’re also LISTENING. You’re looking for signals about what interests your intended audience.
- 23. Benchmarks • SHARE what you learn • Use your own community • Other metrics: Is level of interest in a site reflected in applications, subscriptions, attendance, inquiries? Does interest in your site rise and fall with other measures?
- 24. Are people reading my gems? Behaviors
- 25. Behaviors > Site Content > All pages
- 26. What does “/” mean? • / is usually your home page. • If it doubt, you can usually change your view to show page title.
- 27. A few terms • Pageviews – Includes repeated views of a single page during a session. • Unique pageviews – Number of visits during which the page was viewed at least once. • Entrances - # of times visitors entered your site through this page • Bounce rate – Percentage of single-page visits. • Avg. time on page – Time spent on this page by visitors who decided to visit another page on your • NOTE: Someone could come, read one page thoroughly and count as both a bounce and a zero second visit. (The last page a visitor views on your site doesn’t produce a time because there’s no end count event.)
- 28. Comparing trend lines over time What happened?
- 29. Spikes and dips • Interest is related to seasons, events, holidays • New inbound link | lost inbound link • Your changes paid off | you broke the page • News story • Social media campaign worked • Google search algorithm change • You got called out in social media
- 30. Use annotations Polar vortex, Panda, home page changes, new inbound links, new navigation or design
- 31. Landing pages: where the visit (and judgement) begins
- 32. Landing pages • Not always the home page • Pages that are shared and linked to • Usually pages with the useful, fun, or transactional stuff What we want to proofread again, review regularly, write more of
- 33. Behaviors > Site Content > Landing Pages Home page is 2nd.
- 34. Acquisition > Social > Landing Pages
- 36. Unique pageviews, time on page, bounce rate, exits
- 37. Short stays are not always bad • Navigation pages – Great. They found their next link quickly. • Shopping carts/registration confirmations – Yay! They’re eager to complete. • Pages with a major call to action (as long as they take the action).
- 38. Compare pages
- 39. Compare pages
- 40. Dimensions are fun to explore.
- 41. What are we looking for? • Trends over time • Unexpected spikes and dips in trend lines • Comparisons to other pages • KPIs • 5% increase in traffic from Google over the prior quarter • 8% increase in time on page over prior version of page • 10% decrease in exits on a page compared to last year • 6% increase in visits from social media over last quarter • 3% increase in goal conversions (you set these)
- 42. Referrals •These are the sites and people willing to give you an endorsement •Or they might be using you as a negative example
- 44. What did they say about me? • Do they like me? • Do they understand me? • Can I add something? Suggest another link? • Do I need to tell them I changed the link URL?
- 45. Referral spam No traffic sent. They just want you to click. Don’t. Yoursite.com Yoursite.com Yoursite.com Yoursite.com Yoursite.com Yoursite.com Yoursite.com Yoursite.com Yoursite.com
- 46. Admin > Property > Tracking Info > Referral Exclusion List Might just mask the problem and move traffic into Direct reports
- 47. Set a filter or exclude through .htaccess file or block IP addresses http://www.optimizesmart.com/geek-guide-removing-referrer-spam-google-analytics/
- 48. Promoting content • Which social site works the best for us? • Who is promoting for us? • Is email working? • How about our SEO? • PR?
- 49. Social
- 50. Campaigns = email, AdWords, etc. Also, now with spam.
- 51. Consider how you name your email campaigns
- 52. Segments
- 53. Customize it
- 54. Built-in options
- 58. Minneapolis – sort of
- 59. This is approximately the Minneapolis metro.
- 63. All keywords from Google are shown as (not provided)
- 64. This report shows only if connected with Google Webmaster
- 66. One query can have multiple pages and multiple positions.
- 67. Other reports
- 68. Don’t freak out about these. Just ask your developer(s) to take a look.
- 69. You can ask for your search logs • Scan the search queries • Look for the • Unexpected (need new content, different words?) • Repeated (problem with navigation?) • Outdated (need a page just for these queries?) • Consider KeyMatches
- 70. Ask for a screen shot instead of this Lots of searches for “director school of music”
- 71. Search for Women’s Studies
- 72. Search for “meat lab hours”
- 73. Dashboards Use ones created by others. • www.dashboardjunkie.com • www.google.com/analytics/gall ery/#landing/start/ • econsultancy.com/blog/62828- 10-useful-google-analytics- custom-dashboards/
- 74. Dashboard: Long tail Keywords, real words used by visitors Identify Topics
- 75. Blog titles, headings, search keymatches, social teasers
- 79. What analytics doesn’t measure well • Upcoming trends, interests, needs • True satisfaction (Are people just taking the best they can find?) • Why a page fails (jargon, not of interest, too wordy, poor choice of image, etc.) • Visitor intent • Visitor intent to return
- 80. Social analytics • Follower count • Likes, +1s • Shares • Unsolicited shares (created their own posts linking to you) • Engagement (comments) • Clicks on landing pages or target pages from social • Which social channel performs best
- 81. Email • Open rate • Clicks (on which content?) • Forwards • Subscription rate • Unsubscribe rate • Leads generated / goals achieved
- 82. Production • Time to publish • Content throughput (volume) • Content backlog • Production cost • Distribution cost • Who writes your best performing content?
- 83. Learn much more • https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/ • Identifying and Filtering Internal Traffic from Google Analytics • 7 Essential Intelligence Events for Your Google Analytics Account • 18 useful Google Analytics custom reports, segments and dashboards for SEO • YouTube Tracking In Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager • Understanding Bot and Spider Filtering from Google Analytics • Where Should The Google Analytics Tracking Code Be Placed?